"Fiddling with emissions" by building global solar and wind electricity generation is easier to do than damming the strait, quicker, and has less unintended consequences and more benefits.It has already been shown by several researchers in several publications that it (solar/wind generation on a global scale) can be completed in about 20 years. The dam - from idea to the finish line including all the debating, planning and building - will not be ready in less. The bigger the project, the longer the discussions beforehand.It needs political will and starting money, the same applies to the dam.It can be done incrementally on a country by country basis with fewer engineering question marks and fewer financial unknowns, and does not require global agreement beforehand.It solves many more problems, such as ocean acidification, global warming and what have you, not just the issue of Arctic sea ice.It avoids many unknowns associated with the proposed dam - what will happen to the Pacific? Will the warm blob become warmer and more persistent? Will Atlantic water enter the Arctic more strongly once the Bering flow is stopped? What will happen to Alaskan climate? What about sea migrations?It avoids the risk of a catastrophic failure at some future time either due to engineering failure or due to sabotage/war.

There's no arguing on we need massive emissions reductions asap.

My tenet being it doesn't matter specifically to Arctic sea-ice what we do about emissions anymore thus calling it "fiddling" the reason is heat-gain from albedo loss metrics.

From 2001-2011 albedo loss provided 25% of the equivalent heating as CO2 emission gains from 1979, and globally that's ~0.21-watts/m².

So what that implies was the albedo-loss mechanism put in 25% of that total energy gained for that period both implying we'd be cooler had not this been going on.

The ongoing geophysical process is melting-degrading any ice forming to accelerate it for the next year when in fall not all of the gained heat is lost back to cooling.

Emissions can't effect this, we're at 3-ppm/year we can end them this instant it won't matter for decades due to the oceans out-gassing CO2 being rather saturated with it and having the forcing end.

I see there's now a poll attached to it. I've answered "Not important" because it's closest to the correct answer, which is that sea ice reflects climate change, not vice versa. Trying to magically make more ice (and some of the schemes here are genuinely magical thinking that break the laws of physics) will not do a thing to stop climate change - but cutting emissions may end the decline in sea ice.

Say your house had poor foundations and was subsiding. The walls are cracking, the windows are falling out, and the tiles are coming off the roof. Is your best course of action really to get up on the roof and try to Velcro the tiles back on?

I see there's now a poll attached to it. I've answered "Not important" because it's closest to the correct answer, which is that sea ice reflects climate change, not vice versa. Trying to magically make more ice (and some of the schemes here are genuinely magical thinking that break the laws of physics) will not do a thing to stop climate change - but cutting emissions may end the decline in sea ice.

Say your house had poor foundations and was subsiding. The walls are cracking, the windows are falling out, and the tiles are coming off the roof. Is your best course of action really to get up on the roof and try to Velcro the tiles back on?

Logic test, you say, "... which is that sea ice reflects climate change, not vice versa.", and I have to agree it's doing exactly that by disappearing, which tells what's going on is a total disruption of the sea-ice.

Now with that comes the onus of letting it continue, all observations show an increase in size and volume of clathrate vents on the seabed, and, land permafrost melting continues with heating to 50m of +3C above what it was at this time.

So now consider we're at 3-ppm CO2, over 9-petagrams/year this is called in paleontology an "excursion", the only times these have happened have been mass-extinctions and our carbon excursion has a best analog of the PETM, Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Thus that's really important because loss of the sea-ice instigates a large methane release and those are the prime suspect for the PETM which took 50,000-years and the only way that could happen was more carbon than the volcanics from the Siberian Steps put out.

Then one cannot forget that heating the water is faster at heating the planet than emitting CO2, that's why a decade of albedo loss was 25% of the heat added by all the CO2 from 1979 to 2015. 36 years.

Does heat advection through the Bering Strait contribute to the thermohaline conveyor cooling and thus sinking in the north Pacific? This would be one way to find out.

Apology somehow missed this, I don't have bathymetric & current charts so guessing that only the main drift counts for volume, storms may enhance that yet it's a sill of a sort the "deep" at St. Lawrence Island is 50ftm/90m, it's rather shallow on a tilt to the Aleutian chain.

That makes me suspect it's not involved with the overturning much.

The volume rate is a million-m³/second, to me that's not a big enough influence due to the Aleutian chain as most of the overturning is south of them.

My take on the cold zone is freshwater runoff increasing, there are a ton of small rivers & lagoons on the Siberian side, the current is taking the water north, on nullschool there is a west-to-east surface current I'm trying to enhance to become a longshore current with the closing.

Does heat advection through the Bering Strait contribute to the thermohaline conveyor cooling and thus sinking in the north Pacific? This would be one way to find out.

Apology somehow missed this, I don't have bathymetric & current charts so guessing that only the main drift counts for volume, storms may enhance that yet it's a sill of a sort the "deep" at St. Lawrence Island is 50ftm/90m, it's rather shallow on a tilt to the Aleutian chain.

That makes me suspect it's not involved with the overturning much.

The volume rate is a million-m³/second, to me that's not a big enough influence due to the Aleutian chain as most of the overturning is south of them.

My take on the cold zone is freshwater runoff increasing, there are a ton of small rivers & lagoons on the Siberian side, the current is taking the water north, on nullschool there is a west-to-east surface current I'm trying to enhance to become a longshore current with the closing.

I like your enthusiasm for this. If only the world was so focused on solutions. I'm in the sceptical group, but what the hell do I know?! Keep on arguing.

1) I love to see big projects worked on, and they don't come any bigger than this.2) It would show that climate change is finally being taken seriously.3) It would show that, unlike cats, countries can be herded together in co-operation.

I'd hate to see this attempted for a few other reasons:

1) We have a small idea of some of the unintended consequences, and even they're not nice.2) It's a distraction from the more urgent needs of planning for the effects of climate change.3) It will give us belief that we're doing something about climate change, so we can carry on BAU as normal.

1) I love to see big projects worked on, and they don't come any bigger than this.2) It would show that climate change is finally being taken seriously.3) It would show that, unlike cats, countries can be herded together in co-operation.

I'd hate to see this attempted for a few other reasons:

1) We have a small idea of some of the unintended consequences, and even they're not nice.2) It's a distraction from the more urgent needs of planning for the effects of climate change.3) It will give us belief that we're doing something about climate change, so we can carry on BAU as normal.

I'm in the sceptical/please don't camp.

For downside consider this closure is just another ice-age cycle, it was open 12,000-years ago, in this plan sea-mammals can migrate if they want and have birthing ice habitat, fisheries will have ladders.

As for being a distraction that's actually very wrong it's front-burner with the ice gone.

The heat-gain is huge from the loss in albedo, people aren't getting the 80:1 situation when that ice is gone the solar energy & air that before melted 1-gram of ice heats a gram of water by 80C/144F, that's the physics problem.

So now daily this new heat source is adding on a global scale 0.21-watts/m², hardly a distraction and tellingly a decade of gain from 2001-2011 equals 1/4th of that caused by emissions from 1979 to present, 36-years, it's heating almost as fast as emissions because it's more efficient at heating than the secondary effect of LWIR retention.

As a skeptic this is a real issue, covered in this video: "Charles Kennel:The Impacts of Arctic Sea Ice Retreat on Contemporary Climate."; 21:59;

What this implies directly is to do squat reducing emissions now requires twice the reductions than anticipated at Paris, get it?

This is a very serious matter in my book everyone is bitching about economic effects well it just got worse by a factor of two or more to reduce them faster on a timeline folks, you can't sit in the chair this is ongoing.

So, the longer nothing is done, the faster it happens is how the planet works, right?

We're at 3-ppm/year jumping from 280 to 405-ppm in 260-years we'll be at 600-ppm within 70-years where from a recent paper Antarctica starts to go really fast and is committed to all melt off around 800-ppm which we reach BAU within 130-years.

The bonus is all meaningful coral reefs are dead at 750-ppm, I haven't found a scientist who thinks we can stop CO2 before 600-ppm and this halves the timelines of all previous expectations, eh?

The onus is now very strong to tackle sea-ice loss because it's adding so much direct heat and wasn't considered thoroughly I daresay by anyone except to know it'll gain heat, the metrics were done years ago.

The other Catch-22 little spoken of is how long sea-level goes up after CO2 goes down, anyone who has studied the graphs of them would say it's several centuries or more before the sea stops rising, at 405-ppm we're committed to 25m/82ft more ocean it's only how fast, eh?

That's the context, there is no arguing about a need to deal with sea-ice loss when it's equaling emissions in heating is there?

Since ice acts as an insulator, I think what we need to do is manufacture a polyna (pollyanna) at the pole to remove excess heat over the winter.

This could be done using the same construction methods, I propose artificial atolls to deal with the largest methane fields, for this idea it can be used to create an upwelling from currents my flash as the deeper water is warmer & usually more saline, worth modeling.

You mention sea level rise in your last post. I don't know how steep the shorelines are where the strait is at it's narrowest, but if anything other than vertical cliffs, the breadth of the strait as well as the volume of the flow will increase well out of proportion to any rise in sea level.The 80 to 1 release of sensible heat when phase change of ice ends has bothered me for years, as has the thought of vast amounts of CH4 from a warmed ESAS. I can't imagine that your dam will ever reach serious consideration, too much cooperation required, too expensive, too little time.I've resigned myself to the not too distant loss of Arctic ice followed closely by the end of civilization, or at least anything resembling the present. If Carter had won his second term, we might have escaped,(or at least delayed) this. That was 36 years ago. He didn't, we are cooked.Terry

You mention sea level rise in your last post. I don't know how steep the shorelines are where the strait is at it's narrowest, but if anything other than vertical cliffs, the breadth of the strait as well as the volume of the flow will increase well out of proportion to any rise in sea level.The 80 to 1 release of sensible heat when phase change of ice ends has bothered me for years, as has the thought of vast amounts of CH4 from a warmed ESAS. I can't imagine that your dam will ever reach serious consideration, too much cooperation required, too expensive, too little time.I've resigned myself to the not too distant loss of Arctic ice followed closely by the end of civilization, or at least anything resembling the present. If Carter had won his second term, we might have escaped,(or at least delayed) this. That was 36 years ago. He didn't, we are cooked.Terry

Yeah, yet as a solo climber I'm perhaps too persistent, willing to fail & try again, maybe why I suggested getting it done by pirates who want to own the shipping canals ... governments are pirates there's no need to worry about them anymore as vehicles of human needs-n-dreams.

For myself I know there are people who wanna' try, and dammit if you're not lending a hand get outta' the way, at 3-ppm & 405-ppm on the face of it that's a mass-extinction without action, SAR underway back off there's all of our children's dreams on the line.

To counter why to do it the largest reason so far is nutrient transport into the Chukchi Sea making it a feeding ground, working on how to continue to supply the nutrients w/o the high volume [ Arctic Odyssey: Flow; 4:28; ].

The main construction structure uses large pipes spaced close enough to slow current to a specified velocity they create a pressure wave upstream that restricts flow, a sieve dam, very porous yet voila!, it's a reasonable flow to not disrupt the early forming and late retention of sea-ice to sustain the nutrient flow if done correctly!

Thus this dam wouldn't be operated water-tight, it would be like a large river input instead of 4-5-Amazons in volume ... to me no shipping canal, we need to restore the entire sea-ice system to battle overheating this planet, the fossilites had their day back off end the leverage-cheap-labor-ship-it economy that's all that's moving beyond oil-gas-coal, eh?

Shipping & aircraft were not limited by Paris to accommodate the continuation of this racket, a crime syndicate now for all to see.

I have high confidence in the new technique, the analogy is when you forgot filling the bath and it started to overflow, saved it on the first tinkles and unlike the bathtub if you create a spillway it will stay at overflow height and not go down.

Consider that.

The volume is greatly reduced yet the bathtub level remains equal, eh? Ring a bell for closing a massive opening to the sea?

At first the spillway is the entire length of the Cape Romanzof leg, restricted by a wire-rope net in flow. The key is as the height of the dam grows the tendency of the natural deep-water current's mass due to momentum will want to keep moving SE, the taller it gets the stronger this tendency.

Near actual closure the net is smaller gaps to assist this last part by restricting volume more, the sea won't rise there will be a "equalization wave" formed on the south side higher than sea-level.

The volume won't now be pushed by the entire water-column moving north, only a small portion near the surface, it's being choked off by the main mass being carried by its kinetic energy & momentum having a velocity SE so not interested in turning north.

This hasn't been modeled, it's my design strategy theory on how to close off this passage using a unique blend of existing construction techniques carried out at this scale.

With fish & mammals accommodations this is starting to become an integrated solution with habitats & current sustainable economies, especially remote villages depending on sea-mammals & fishing in the traditional way, if you restore sea-ice people can use dogsleds, eh?

Right on, I already left the Dutch method and mixed in using pilings ala Army Engrs near New Orleans in a new way to create the structure to pull up wire-rope nets.

As for enhancing the current from the west off Northwest Cape which is crucial to reducing flow during construction, having the nets slow flow during construction makes a much more likely closure than leaving a gap.

Then finding a solution to allowing a large river's worth of inflow to carry nutrients into the Chukchi Sea by creating a slit dam, a full closure would cut this off.

All without modeling from a variety of building experience, study, shop work, it's not very theoretical actually I have a wave-tank in my brain started studying that as a kid ... and now pretty good a Comsol & Solidworks.

And, if modeling validates it what then will you say, just curious ...

The new poll is a mass-energy problem in a fluid flow, if you think it's false please reply with why as it can be either making the answer true and that depends on structures at this scale.

By forcing the current from the west to keep going instead of turning north at that key area it gains velocity in a SE direction, that resultant vector & mass-volume isn't going north and now will fight any flow north it runs into, this can definitely reduce the overall flow versus having that gap open.

The 1/2m height only has the lower area open to allow current flow, it must increase height to result in equal flow, will it do that with this new current at the entrance vs the two open?

Consider (albedo-loss) = (20-years of CO2 heat-gains from emissions), this only gets worse.The mechanism to do this has two parts and end by heating the water directly, CO2 captures heat by reflection yet albedo-loss is direct thus understated if included in the models, most don't, no mention in Paris [not in on breakout work it may have been, stated by Prof. Wadhams & others].

Globally this now is 0.21-watts/m², locally it can be much more in the sea-ice due to methane clathrate releases happening all over in various emission rates, even if covered by ice it has CO2 transfer ability, a recent finding so ice doesn't cap releases.

Thus the Beaufort Sea has become the Beaufort Blob, the basal melting has taken its main area from 4-9 year-old multi-year ice to fast-ice, first year ice that's weak and salty with very little old ice left. What's left is "rotten ice" a new form of sea-ice that was cored last fall, it's created by basal melting from the heat pool not able to release the gained heat back in fall. ["Assessing the Habitability and Physical Structure of Rotting First-year Arctic Sea Ice"; 6:39; ]That the context this the solution doesn't depend upon emissions control or carbon-taxes, it's a coastal civil geo-technical engineering to restrict the flow of Pacific water entering the Eastern Arctic Basin worth 10-TeraJoules in winter and double that in summer in heat-flux in.This water remains on the surface and is colder-fresher from extensive runoff that creating a 1/2m of height in favor of the Pacific resulting in a 10^6m²/sec, 1-sverdrup of flow, and reduce that to about 2-Yukon River's worth from 4-5 Amazons in volume using a weir section with most of the closure a dam.

At first the route was Wales to Fairway Rock and across then studied it, current was too fast so it became closing at St. Lawrence Island as a far better situation to alter the mesoscale flow to reduce overall flow.

At the straits the velocity increase is too much, having the island is easy to build in spite of more distance, the benefit of the more southerly closing outweigh the gain in distance when the weir is added, that became a hydro-electric asset.

The evolving method of construction combines facets of the Dutch expertise along with Inca awareness of porosity and the American use of pipe pilings at an angle.

The Dutch were in shallow water to apply them more deeply the wicker weave that became plastic in rolls now is a wire-rope net of varying weave that unrolls bottom-up.

This becomes in a few hours a porous "dam" by raising the net on angled pipes quickly to shift the momentum of the inflow to the SE by creating an "equalization wave".

The drag from the net raises the height of the water on the Pacific side this restricts flow volume, that makes construction far easier all around.

Using the Dutch closure of the river for surges into Rotterdam by placing foundations with lower pipe & structure then adding upper sections after it's ready those tied with the winches to raise the net. ["Holland's Barriers to the Sea"; 44:20; ]

The pipes need packing with sand & extra bracing for the closure, much of this can be removed after the change in impulse for the water-mass to the SE, the one north attenuated, for most of the mass it's "easier" for it to continue southeast: Image of mesoscale current changes from only the Northwest Cape closure in place a critical first step to reduce flow to closing the southern part: http://www.mallard-design.com/mdc2010/media/aleutian-currents2.jpg

Thus with that in place the circular weir section of the dam is built and when ready the dam sections left closed, the weir or sieve dam part is a hydro-electric bonus of the design concept along with sustaining marine migration & nutrient flow north.

Consider that as a plan to restore sea-ice by creating a refuge for it to form earlier and melt later instead of leading the melt path every year up into the Beaufort so it's first out, last in.

The feedback math demands a try to me, no way is incremental reduction of emissions going to do anything to stop sea-ice albedo increases, game-over my take what's yours?

Therefore, consider this "The Last Hurrah for Sea-ice".How will the movie end? Will the Beaufort Blob be chilled into defeat by a longer ice season?Stay tuned ... People on betting on the Bluewater Event, this would alter the odds a bet.

Construction methods changes: Foundations will use pipe & pilings to fix to the bottom the upper part will use I-beams of a sort these much easier to rig dollies to raise the wire-rope net and less drag in the current.

You know, I once read a document by someone who wanted to recruit an expert programming team in order to create a friendly, superintelligent AI. This being the only way to prevent us all being killed by _hostile_ superintelligent AIs. Somewhere in the laundry list of requirements was the line, “Java programming (that’s probably what we’ll end up doing it in).”

You know, I once read a document by someone who wanted to recruit an expert programming team in order to create a friendly, superintelligent AI. This being the only way to prevent us all being killed by _hostile_ superintelligent AIs. Somewhere in the laundry list of requirements was the line, “Java programming (that’s probably what we’ll end up doing it in).”

No idea why that suddenly sprung to mind. At all.

My flash on that is I hate any language with (curly braces {these cause errors} ... ooops missed one, that does fit the current mentality of tradition instead of something more functional & lean, for .Net F# was my fav never learned Haskell or such.

Support for intentionally creating a blocking eddy to help prevent inflow: "The trajectories (Fig. 7) reveal the presence of two eddies that inhibited much of the flow through the pass. The northern drifter remained in the cyclonic eddy for 22 days, making 2.5 circuits around the northern eddy. The other drifter made four circuits of the southern eddy before malfunctioning. Typical speeds of rotation were the same for each eddy, 30 cm/s. Flow of significant amounts of Alaskan Stream water was thus blocked from the pass."; from "The physical oceanography of the Bering Sea: A summary of physical, chemical, and biological characteristics, and a synopsis of research on the Bering Sea"; Phyllis J. Stabeno,1 James D. Schumacher; NOAA, Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, Seattle, WA; and Kiyotaka Ohtani; Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, Japan. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/stab1878/general.shtml

Heat Transport Currents, the Pacific water moves eastward and flows through the archipelago with an influx from the Atlantic:

Then, compare to a color-replaced temperature from the same area today I used orange to highlight the slight difference to where temps were colder more toward the pole under thicker ice

This to me shows the areal extent of Pacific water that does stay near the surface with the warmth ending east of Baffin Island showing itself with a temperature signature through the thinning ice.

That looks like where open water exists early and stays late so a result of albedo-loss creating a thermal-mass of the ocean that degrades the ice. It also points to a rapid retreat to the demarcation when conditions are ripe for the entire basin.

To create ice-polders around the islands the railway-roadway fits on the west side of the islands trapping runoff to use for the locks for the next 50-years or so then there won't be much flow through there is the caveat on generating power from ice-fed streams for the planet.

The is a talk on that with a global view to glacial water versus hydro power on what the models show and the constraints with a focus on Alaska's situation; "World-Wide Glacier Wastage - Implications for Sea-Level and Streamflow "; 44:06;

Because of this the weir dam construction is intended to be done so most of the long-lasting hardware can be removed and used elsewhere. Preserving the sea-ice is aided by the form and the railroad-roadway the traditional route near the narrow part of the straits.

To last the dams must handle 15m/50ft of sea-level rise, we must think like this or forget it. Putting in the foundation is where all the mass of the dam is going, raising it that much is trivial versus not planning it in and raising a railroad later.

To create ice-polders around the islands the railway-roadway fits on the west side of the islands trapping runoff to use for the locks for the next 50-years or so then there won't be much flow through there is the caveat on generating power from ice-fed streams for the planet.

The is a talk on that with a global view to glacial water versus hydro power on what the models show and the constraints with a focus on Alaska's situation; "World-Wide Glacier Wastage - Implications for Sea-Level and Streamflow "; 44:06;

Because of this the weir dam construction is intended to be done so most of the long-lasting hardware can be removed and used elsewhere. Preserving the sea-ice is aided by the form and the railroad-roadway the traditional route near the narrow part of the straits.

To last the dams must handle 15m/50ft of sea-level rise, we must think like this or forget it. Putting in the foundation is where all the mass of the dam is going, raising it that much is trivial versus not planning it in and raising a railroad later.[/quote] The more you restrict the flow the more flow you would get. That is how a venturi works...

The more you restrict the flow the more flow you would get. That is how a venturi works...

The dam isn't at the actual straits due to being way harder to close because of that, the other that became more important was needing to supply nutrients best with the remaining flow, both led to moving it south to St. Lawrence Island where the flow on the NW side comes the Anadyr current with the best supply of nutrients for the Chukchi Sea.

The other end doesn't get such good water for what you want to let through, and, the clincher was having the border for shipping and fit into the dam for canals using the nutrient rich water to lock with.

Regardless, the straits are the best route for the railroad-roadway to then be in a core of relatively still ice that doesn't raft onto land much where bottom-freezing conditions are the goal among the ice-polders.

Then, how a weir dam works is controlled porosity at a very low head-height, by limiting flow you create the dam. While the volume is huge in head-height it's only 1/2m. For generating power this implies using a design not based on head-height! ... not easy the weir dam allows distributing power to many small generators for the flow let through. With 200-Yukon rivers through there as-is and I want to let 2-Yukons through is the deal.

The whiteout version ... staying in shallower water and enclosing a deeper canyon system, all this needs discussion with the Inuit on where they want sustainable harvest to attach the dam to the island, this version is using the inflow as a feeding station to the calmer waters the weir shape gives to the ice.

It can be a polynya or iced over with snow for seals by controlling flow and back eddies on the north shore of the island, there are choices like this for habitat construction of differing types to make choices on, estuaries for bird migrations are relatively easy.

The biological team is very important to these decisions with the Tribes, they have a chance at a rich sustainable culture for a while again with this project, by 2070 all these waters will be below the aragonite saturation omega of 1, from a recent ARCUS video; :“Using An Environmental Intelligence Framework to Evaluate the Impacts of Ocean Acidification in the Arctic”; 55:32;

The more you restrict the flow the more flow you would get. That is how a venturi works...

The dam isn't at the actual straits due to being way harder to close because of that, the other that became more important was needing to supply nutrients best with the remaining flow, both led to moving it south to St. Lawrence Island where the flow on the NW side comes the Anadyr current with the best supply of nutrients for the Chukchi Sea.

The other end doesn't get such good water for what you want to let through, and, the clincher was having the border for shipping and fit into the dam for canals using the nutrient rich water to lock with.

Regardless, the straits are the best route for the railroad-roadway to then be in a core of relatively still ice that doesn't raft onto land much where bottom-freezing conditions are the goal among the ice-polders.

Then, how a weir dam works is controlled porosity at a very low head-height, by limiting flow you create the dam. While the volume is huge in head-height it's only 1/2m. For generating power this implies using a design not based on head-height! ... not easy the weir dam allows distributing power to many small generators for the flow let through. With 200-Yukon rivers through there as-is and I want to let 2-Yukons through is the deal.

The whiteout version ... staying in shallower water and enclosing a deeper canyon system, all this needs discussion with the Inuit on where they want sustainable harvest to attach the dam to the island, this version is using the inflow as a feeding station to the calmer waters the weir shape gives to the ice.

It can be a polynya or iced over with snow for seals by controlling flow and back eddies on the north shore of the island, there are choices like this for habitat construction of differing types to make choices on, estuaries for bird migrations are relatively easy.

The biological team is very important to these decisions with the Tribes, they have a chance at a rich sustainable culture for a while again with this project, by 2070 all these waters will be below the aragonite saturation omega of 1, from a recent ARCUS video; :“Using An Environmental Intelligence Framework to Evaluate the Impacts of Ocean Acidification in the Arctic”; 55:32;

Tunneling is way more expensive than dredge-n-fill ... just sayin' a lot of things are possible, yet, if you want to make ice-polders anyway railroad or not, it's not as much ROI for the $$$ & effort a way to look at it.

This is thermal mitigation before it's all gone too far and the big jump in albedo-loss happens, this is to forestall that moment by creating an ice refuge, to prevent storm driven ice from clearing out so early to construct ice-polders, large areas to seed a larger change in ice retention and aging in the Beaufort.

From latest thoughts it looks possible to extend the North Atlantic ice-edge south by having the eastern basin stay in ice longer but people here more able to assess that.

This project is to create an ice refuge, it has to disrupt things, from that experience to go after methane flares, anything else is frosting.

Does the idea create enough electrical power to replace ALL fossil fuel and nuclear fuel energy?

No way, yet it should pay for a lot of the costs of the dam and levees over time.

Let me put all global steam power in context thermally, I got general figures and the global steam plants put out about 18,000-Terawatt-hours/year and the thing with steam is that it takes 2-Joules of heat to get a Watt on-the-wire, it's very lossy thermally.

So that means you burn twice the energy you get and what's lost heats the planet directly the same as albedo-loss does, this heat goes to the water used to cool, the soils & air and that's 36,000-Twh/year a huge amount of waste heat that must ended.

The damming of rivers fed by glacial runoffs ends in all practicality by 2070 so investing in hydro in Alaska has doubts beyond that making them now questionable to put in concrete-n-steel with their high carbon-footprint just to get electrons when we can use that same carbon-footprint to have solar-wind-storage that can replace them and steam plants.

It's far better for fisheries and sustainable living to support long-term needs and leave the rivers to flood and recharge groundwater as that makes dryland farming possible in many areas where if you put in a dam you have to pump to farm flood terraces and that takes power so why do it that way?

This happened all over the American west where the big dams went in and the riverine habitat is the most productive of anything in semi-arid lands so it's a big deal.

For Alaska this link is to a talk of model studies showing future river volume for all major watersheds with a focus on Alaska; "World-Wide Glacier Wastage - Implications for Sea-Level and Streamflow"; 44:06;

Why not use the heat energy and kinetic energy in the water to make electricity as it flows passed the Damn?

This is part of the plan for the main weir dam, the flow is used by vertical-axis turbines on each side of a slit in the dam that's always open to flow allowing sea-life passage, also adjustment horizontally to vary flow, and the turbines can move to well below the surface to avoid slabbing damage.

The power being generated is created by freshwater flow, keep that in mind as this will only reduce after 2070 by the latest models after that the head-height of 1/2-meter that can go up until about 2050 will only become far less within 85-years, this applies to any existing or proposed dam which of course have a huge carbon-footprint to build and very negative ecological damage.

Why not use the heat energy and kinetic energy in the water to make electricity as it flows passed the Damn?

This is part of the plan for the main weir dam, the flow is used by vertical-axis turbines on each side of a slit in the dam that's always open to flow allowing sea-life passage, also adjustment horizontally to vary flow, and the turbines can move to well below the surface to avoid slabbing damage.

The power being generated is created by freshwater flow, keep that in mind as this will only reduce after 2070 by the latest models after that the head-height of 1/2-meter that can go up until about 2050 will only become far less within 85-years, this applies to any existing or proposed dam which of course have a huge carbon-footprint to build and very negative ecological damage.

Why not use the heat energy and kinetic energy in the water to make electricity as it flows passed the Damn?

This is part of the plan for the main weir dam, the flow is used by vertical-axis turbines on each side of a slit in the dam that's always open to flow allowing sea-life passage, also adjustment horizontally to vary flow, and the turbines can move to well below the surface to avoid slabbing damage.

The power being generated is created by freshwater flow, keep that in mind as this will only reduce after 2070 by the latest models after that the head-height of 1/2-meter that can go up until about 2050 will only become far less within 85-years, this applies to any existing or proposed dam which of course have a huge carbon-footprint to build and very negative ecological damage.

The levees are for shipping and to be freshwater pathways that will be intentionally directed to where it mixes in the Arctic Basin to cause the least damage to sea-ice, that water is also acidic so keeping the seawater from mixing to extend fisheries part of planning right now.

This is really important around the Mackenzie Delta which melts offshore early and large into the Beaufort to channel that natural flow more east close to shore and not let the flow push it to sea as far.

The simple idea of a sea-ice refuge has a new goal of extending fisheries as long as possible in the way it allows shipping.

The construction technique can be used to save all of the Inuit villages on eroding islands, it's really too easy to watch them wash away for spite I guess, the world owes it to them, making them pay for the work when they are losing a sustainable lifestyle and a pound of chicken meat is $100 ...

Anyway tunneling is useful, I'm considering using portable sections to convey the dredgings to the placement without raising it to the surface, the "tunnel conveyor" keeps the sediment fines from blowing all over on the way so have sketches of that.

Yet, overall flow through the Straits is just under 1/2-knot, the volume is 0.8-0.9 x 10^6-m^3/sec with a 1/2-m head-height that creates it, the surface does get 5-8 knots in places on most tides afaik from dock talk never been there.

There is a big vortex off the SE end of St. Lawrence Island that restricts flow northward from the Alaskan Continental Current as-is, today, and most of the nutrients come from the Anadyr current so the main flow right now is through the NW side where the weir dam location is to let mainly high nutrient water through to the Chukchi fishery.

The big curve of the weir dam is to deal with swells entering from the south and have the volume let through dispersed for least current flow below the surface. Levees and ice-polders will confine areas north of the dam to keep the sea-ice from being broken up in the winds,.

Part of the location is that there will be no ocean swells getting through the dam, consider then north of it to be far easier to divide up to preserve the ice to still-water in order to refreeze the bottom. This process creates a progressive cold sink that should help to sustain the permafrost.

Yet, overall flow through the Straits is just under 1/2-knot, the volume is 0.8-0.9 x 10^6-m^3/sec with a 1/2-m head-height that creates it, the surface does get 5-8 knots in places on most tides afaik from dock talk never been there.

There is a big vortex off the SE end of St. Lawrence Island that restricts flow northward from the Alaskan Continental Current as-is, today, and most of the nutrients come from the Anadyr current so the main flow right now is through the NW side where the weir dam location is to let mainly high nutrient water through to the Chukchi fishery.

The big curve of the weir dam is to deal with swells entering from the south and have the volume let through dispersed for least current flow below the surface. Levees and ice-polders will confine areas north of the dam to keep the sea-ice from being broken up in the winds,.

Part of the location is that there will be no ocean swells getting through the dam, consider then north of it to be far easier to divide up to preserve the ice to still-water in order to refreeze the bottom. This process creates a progressive cold sink that should help to sustain the permafrost.

Yet, overall flow through the Straits is just under 1/2-knot, the volume is 0.8-0.9 x 10^6-m^3/sec with a 1/2-m head-height that creates it, the surface does get 5-8 knots in places on most tides afaik from dock talk never been there.<snip>

No doubt you can get 20-knots, it doesn't happen with a weir dam and ice-polders in place, it can't get that much current and it can't eddy due to the big bell shape, there's a lot to that shape to deal with Pacific swells, stacking-slabbing ice and not allowing strong currents.

A major goal is to refreeze the bottom north of the dam, it has to be -2C/28F water to do that with that much current there'd be too much mixing, "ice-polders" are levees to confine areas in fetch against storm winds to do this physically.

The same idea applied somewhat offshore of the Inuit villages getting eroded away would prevent any waves hitting shore and the inshore area would refreeze to the bottom to reverse the thawing permafrost below sea-level.

So bridging the 100km gap between the island and both land masses with a damn and making the space 2/3 more narrow could get you 20 knots there... A 20 mile wide current of 20knots sounds like a lot of electrical power could be generated there.....

Yet, overall flow through the Straits is just under 1/2-knot, the volume is 0.8-0.9 x 10^6-m^3/sec with a 1/2-m head-height that creates it, the surface does get 5-8 knots in places on most tides afaik from dock talk never been there.<snip>

No doubt you can get 20-knots, it doesn't happen with a weir dam and ice-polders in place, it can't get that much current and it can't eddy due to the big bell shape, there's a lot to that shape to deal with Pacific swells, stacking-slabbing ice and not allowing strong currents.

A major goal is to refreeze the bottom north of the dam, it has to be -2C/28F water to do that with that much current there'd be too much mixing, "ice-polders" are levees to confine areas in fetch against storm winds to do this physically.

The same idea applied somewhat offshore of the Inuit villages getting eroded away would prevent any waves hitting shore and the inshore area would refreeze to the bottom to reverse the thawing permafrost below sea-level.

So bridging the 100km gap between the island and both land masses with a damn and making the space 2/3 more narrow could get you 20 knots there... A 20 mile wide current of 20knots sounds like a lot of electrical power could be generated there.....

For flow volume context, right now the head-height of the Pacific is 1/2m driving the flow below surface currents where it's a little under 1/2-knot overall yet a high volume 5-Amazons, and, putting turbine blades too near the surface means slabbing can damage them the practicality.

The second concern is by 2070 all glacial and much of the surface permafrost thaw runoff will fade to only watershed hydrology so the high runoff of the next decades is done and the head-height will be reduced to seasonal river flows.

Thus the power from the dam is constrained to sub-surface currents to provide a consistent capacity designed to the assumed long-term flow with extra turbines in the meantime that can be removed later.

The last factor is that tidal and storm currents are intermittent so require storage to really be useful and easy to add to a mini-grid or grid, the below-surface flow is very consistent 24x7 for power, the flow velocity can be increased using the gap between turbines on each side of a slit.

I'm into small windmills, 2kw in pairs and have a design I called the Alaska Mill made from used pipe or rebar and able to take any storm that happens, icing shouldn't matter ... right now I don't have a shop, will test them on Mt. Rainier as demo's for replacing solar panels at cabins as windmills put out the wattage vs panels.

For anyone in AK off-grid this is the theory & info on the small windmills, he has installs in AK, the lead of the research; "John Dabiri | Opportunities and Challenges for Next-Generation Wind Energy"; 25:13;

If you dammed the East side of the island completely off how fast would the flow increase through the channel on the West side of the island??

Total flow is 0.8-0.9 sverdrup (1-sverdrup = 10^6 m^3/second), the head-height is 1/2m, by confining flow this goes up and guesstimating velocity that's just under 1/2-knot goes up by 1/10-3/10 of a knot, the channel on that side is deeper than the western channel and most current today flows through it. The arrows are current speed today, I modified them to fake what they'd be with the dam.

For this project the weir dam takes the increased height and holds it, only allowing 1/100th the flow through, it's about 200-Yukons down to 2-Yukon rivers worth of volume ballpark from the Anadyr side as that's the main source of fishery nutrients.